Gamer's Outpost Press (archived)

by Erik Kain

Sony’s rather boring new-gen video game console, the PlayStation 4, has sold through over 10 million units to consumers.

This makes it the leader in the new-gen console race, which may come as a surprise to readers. After all, the competition has much more exciting and innovative video game consoles than the PS4.

Even Sony is surprised by how fast their boring new console is selling.

Microsoft’s Xbox One (originally) launched with the exciting and innovative Kinect sensor, all for just $499. (Now Microsoft offers a much less interesting Xbox One without the Kinect for $399, the same price as Sony’s rather boring PS4.)

The Kinect allows users to navigate the Xbox One UI with voice commands that you may or may not remember. This is a super useful feature for parents whose children refuse to stop watching Netflix or won’t turn off a video game when asked repeatedly. A simple “Xbox Off” from across the room takes care of that problem.

Trust me, you won’t forget that voice command. (Though your kids may learn “Xbox On” pretty quickly.)

Games like Ryse: Son of Rome let you order troops around via voice commands, and there was this one fighting game that everyone hated that allowed you to sort of fumble around the room using gestures—instead of button combos—to pull off moves. Nobody remembers what that game was called.

Meanwhile, Nintendo launched its own exciting, innovative product known—unfortunately—as the Wii U (instead of the much better-named Super Wii.) Consumers to this day believe the fancy touchscreen gamepad that forms the cornerstone of the Wii U is simply an add-on peripheral for the better known and more successful Wii—last-gen’s best-selling home console.

The Wii U gamepad allows for all sorts of interesting gameplay innovations, including second-screen gaming, asymmetric gameplay, and watching Netflix on the smaller screen so dad can watch football. It’s also extremely useful for kids, many of whom no longer have the capacity to use buttons properly thanks to the rapid rise of touchscreens in modern society.

Last but not least, the expensive gamepad ensured that the Wii U was underpowered compared to the competition, making it very effective at scaring off third party developers.

(While this article is largely tongue-in-cheek—bet you didn’t notice!—the gamepad actually is pretty neat at times, with the handful of games that make use of it such as The Wonderful 101 and some of Nintendo’s party games.)

Which brings us to Sony’s rather dull, rather plain, rather unexceptional PS4 which comes with no touchscreen gamepad—you’d need a PS Vita for that—and no Kinect—though you could buy the PS Move and do a lot of what the Kinect can do—and has really only one thing going for it:

Horse power.

And a reasonable price-tag.

Okay, so the PS4 has just two things going for it: Horse power and a reasonable price-tag.

And the upcoming Project Morpheus virtual reality headset peripheral. But that’s not here yet, so we can’t really talk about it.

(I’d add really neat-looking upcoming exclusive video games to the list also, but that doesn’t really set the PS4 apart from the Xbox One or Wii U, both of which have their own neat-looking exclusives coming up also. Sure, none of them look quite as amazing as Bloodborne, but that’s neither here nor there.)

In any case, the PS4 is in many, many ways just a more powerful PS3. Really, it’s just a more powerful, internet-connected PS2. Not a lot has changed, or not a lot that’s visible to consumers anyways, beyond upgrading the graphics capabilities and tinkering around with the controller.

All of which can serve as a reminder for what gamers—or video game consumers—really want out of a console: boringness.

Let me rephrase that. Gamers want a machine that isn’t center stage and doesn’t try too hard to innovate with inputs, but instead serves as a solid system to play the actually exciting stuff on: Video games.

Sony not only priced the PS4 correctly—$100 less than the less powerful Xbox One and $100 more than the even less powerful Wii U—they also branded it well as a “games-first” system. When you sit down to play the PS4 you are sitting down to play the most powerful, least innovative of the three consoles, and it shows in the games which consistently boast higher frame rates and/or resolution than Xbox One.

Instead of having the plate outshine the meal, Sony simply ensured that the plate wouldn’t interfere with the meal.

As much as I admire both Microsoft and Nintendo for their willingness to … think outside the box (as it were) Sony’s move was the most intuitive. The core gaming community that Sony is catering to with the PS4 doesn’t care much about motion controls, and they play games on their phones already and don’t need a touchscreen gamepad for their couch-gaming.

Sometimes boring is the most business-savvy road to travel. Sometimes it’s a word that shouldn’t carry such negative connotation. If games are the most important thing to gamers, making things like the Kinect or the Wii U gamepad mandatory is a big mistake.

The PS4′s continued trouncing of both these systems is proof enough of that.

http://www.gamersoutpost.net

by Ben Kuchera

Games displayed at 1080p, while running at a smooth 60 frames-per-second, has become part of the marketing for many new games.

It’s a magical bullet point on a list of features that proves that your game is next-generation, and there are groups of players online who sneer at anything that can’t quite hit that goal.

Diablo 3 on the Xbox One, for instance, couldn’t quite get there. The original response was to drop the resolution down to 900p and keep the frame rate. A smooth game, many would argue, is worth sacrificing a few lines of resolution. The problem is that this solution created a PR problem for Microsoft, a company that is scared of consumers seeing the Xbox One as a less-powerful console compared to the PlayStation 4.

“That’s what we demoed and were showing around E3 time. And Microsoft was just like, ‘This is unacceptable. You need to figure out a way to get a better resolution.’ So we worked with them directly, they gave us a code update to let us get to full 1080p,” Blizzard’s John Hight told Eurogamer.

The results were positive, and shows the power of a platform holder invested in helping a developer deliver the best possible game.

The framerate isn’t locked at 60fps

“The good news is that Blizzard has indeed achieved a full 1080p resolution on Xbox One, and has done so with no impact to visual quality. This is aside from what we suspect may be some light tweakery to the shadow maps, an occasional, subtle change that takes effect on the updated PlayStation 4 build too,” Eurogamer reported. “From an image quality perspective, though, first impressions suggest the two console versions are now absolutely identical — a point we hope to elaborate on once we dissect a greater breadth of areas for the full comparison.”

Here’s the problem: The frame rate isn’t locked at 60fps, and in moments with a lot of monsters or effects onscreen, frames are dropped. The report goes to great lengths to point out that both issues, the lowered resolution from the first pass and the dropped frames that you see after installing the day one patch, are subtle and won’t necessarily impact the game’s play in a major way, but we don’t have a choice in which one we prefer.

“[The dropped frames are] not game-breaking, and many players may not even notice — but it’s clear that a 44 per cent boost to resolution doesn’t come for free: in the same scenarios, the 900p version proved smoother,” Eurogamer stated.

The marketing demands 1080p resolution, so that’s what the market itself gets. I would prefer to have a smoother frame rate over the increase in resolution, but I don’t get to make that call. The talking point of that resolution and that target frame rate are going to decide how we play our games, for better or worse.

I think it’s worse. Or better yet, I think the player should be given a choice.

This isn’t a new argument

I’ve written about the many options given to PC players when it comes to visuals, and some of them are beginning to sneak over to the console side of things.

You can lock the frame rate of Killzone: Shadow Fall at 30 fps if you’d like, although the controversy over whether or not that game runs at 60 fps while displaying a 1080p resolution has led to a lawsuit. Because to some people, it’s that important, apparently. The PS4 release of The Last of Us also allows you to lock the frame rate; Sony seems to be comfortable giving at least a small bit of control to the player.

But let’s swing back to the Diablo example, because it’s recent and shows what we’re dealing with here. There are two types of gamers out there: Those who care about these numbers, and those that don’t. The ones that don’t care just want a game that looks good and play smoothly. The actual pixel count or frame rate targets don’t matter, or they matter less.

So the solution, to up the resolution and deal with the hit to frame rate from time to time, is imperfect. It’s marketing, and the gamer that cares will read reports that discuss exactly what happened. The benefit of hitting these arbitrary targets is lost, and we still don’t have a say in which way we’d like to play the game.

The other type of gamer cares about these numbers dearly

So why not give us a choice? I’d much rather be able to choose to increase the resolution or lose frames if I can’t have it both ways, and Microsoft pressuring companies to provide these bullshit numbers takes that choice away from us. The fact these stats are used in marketing isn’t a bad thing, what’s annoying is when hitting those targets is justification for decisions that could impact the play itself.

Sony successfully set the terms for this fight when it stressed how many games are running at the desired resolution and frame rate, and it’s a battle the more-powerful PS4 is well-equipped to fight. Microsoft is playing a dangerous game fighting back in this area, and the differences in graphical fidelity between future games may not be as subtle as what we see in the latest version of Diablo.

We’re going to see more of this as the consoles fight each other, and the only way to really escape it is to play on the PC where you can pour money into new components and not have to choose between resolution and performance. But then many gamers prefer the direct control of the characters you get from using a console-style controller. There’s no option to play this version of Diablo on the PC, so players have a choice to make.

In the case of Diablo 3? I’m playing it on the PS4.

http://www.gamersoutpost.net/

by Dave Smith

Amid all the exciting announcements coming out of last week’s Gamescom trade show in Cologne, Germany, Sony announced a handful of new features coming in its 2.0 firmware for PlayStation 4.

And while firmware is rarely anything to get excited about, this particular update is different — because it will effectively help Sony put distance between itself and Microsoft’s Xbox One.

Sony’s PlayStation 4 has outsold the console competition for seven straight months now, with PS4 sales roughly double that of Xbox One sales worldwide, according to Metro. But with this new update, the PS4 is about to become a much more powerful and user-friendly gaming platform.

The big reason? “Share Play,” which was promised when Sony announced the PS4 at E3, is a feature that allows you to play with any of your PlayStation Network friends over the internet — even if you don’t own the game. (It’s free to register a PSN account.)

This particular feature uses just a single copy of your game that is run locally on one system, and then you or others can invite your friends to play that game with you by streaming it to their consoles. So if you own a racing game that your friends don’t have, you can still play your game with them online (think an HBO Go password, but more social).

But there’s more:

“For example, if there is part of a game that you can’t quite finish, you can invite a friend to take over your controls,” Sony says on its blog. “Like handing over the controller to a friend on your couch, your screen will be shared as your friend gets through the part of the game that has been giving you trouble.”

Share Play sounds extremely promising as a potential game changer for this generation of consoles. Still, Sony says it will limit “Share Play” sessions to one hour each, and lag may unfortunately affect how enjoyable this user feature is. We’ll have to see how well the functionality works in practice.

Why would Sony allow people to play games without paying for them? It’s a way to get people hooked on the system, which should boost hardware and software sales overall.

Other useful additions are inside that 2.0 firmware, including — finally — YouTube support. Before this update, PS4 users could only record and share their gameplay clips to Facebook or an external hard drive. But for all of those gamers looking to make money off their video-gaming achievements or follies, Sony is baking YouTube right into the PS4’s OS to make recording and sharing drop-dead simple.

The Xbox One has one particular advantage over the PlayStation 4, which is its ability to instantly return to where you left off in your game when you wake the console from sleep mode. Sony has actually promised this capability for the PS4, but it is not here yet — still, Sony says it “will have more to announce in the coming months” with regards to this fall’s big 2.0 firmware rollout, so there is still hope for this game suspension feature reaching the PS4.

Though both PlayStation 4 and Xbox One have plenty of first- and third-party games coming to their respective systems this fall, this year’s console wars might come down to how well these consoles can play with other platforms and ecosystems. A game-sharing online multiplayer mode and added support for YouTube will certainly help Sony’s next-gen console, which is getting ready to celebrate its one-year anniversary in just a few short months.

http://www.gamersoutpost.net/

by Daniel Sims  

Editor’s Note from Jason Wilson: Since rumors suggested Sony might bring PS1 and PS2 emulation to the PS4, some suggested even running old discs might be possible. It might sound impossible to many, but it really isn’t.

Eurogamer’s January report about the possibility of Sony using software emulation to get original PlayStation and PlayStation 2 games playable on the PlayStation 4, instead of streaming through the PlayStation Now service, has had some people giddy all year.

Some of these folk have been talking online about how Sony could make old PS1 and PS2 discs work on the PS4 — and while it might be easy to write this off as fanboys, it’s could happen. And depending on how the technology works, disc compatibility might not even be that difficult for Sony to implement. You could even argue against possible business concerns.

As Eurogamer states, this would basically be the same way compatibility with PS2 and PS1 games works on PS3 models that don’t use the Emotion Engine (i.e., everything built after the 20GB and 60GB Japanese and North American models that debuted in 2006). Sony has a PS1 emulator that runs most of these games well on the PS3, the PSP, and even the Vita, without those games needing any alternations. Sony also has a PS2 emulator running for the PS3, but it can only accurately run a relative handful of PS2 games — the games in the PS2 classics section of the PlayStation Store. Eurogamer’s sources indicate Sony intends to bring that emulation to the PS4.

This is interesting for people hoping to run old discs because that emulation is exactly how the PS3 runs PS1 discs (even the Slim model). Heck, even save files are compatible between PS3, PSP, Vita, and old PS1 memory cards. If Sony has already nailed PS1 emulation so well, why not carry that capability over to the much more powerful PS4? Sony Worldwide Studios head Shuhei Yoshida even admitted last year that emulation would be ideal: “The easiest thing technically would be to make PS1 games work on PS4 through emulation.”

The situation with PS2 games is a bit more clouded. PS3 hackers have actually managed to get newer models of the system to run PS2 discs through its own-board emulator, but it doesn’t run most games accurately at all. Even PC emulators like PCSX2 can run PS2 discs. Theoretically, the PS4 should be much more capable of emulating a wide variety of PS2 games, hopefully even most of them. If Sony reached a point where PS2 emulation on PS4 worked as well as their PS1 emulation does now, they could technically enable people to run PS2 discs. At the very least this would let Sony toss many more PS2 classics on the PlayStation Store for PS4.

As for the running of old games at HD resolutions, if it happens, it would probably only be for a select few games. This is one of the main allures of PCSX2, but it only works well with a small number of PS2 games for which the emulator is constantly tweaked (such as Final Fantasy XII). Still, the results are often nearly as good as an HD remaster with a fraction of the effort. Theoretically, this could also work with physical copies of old games.

Why do all this instead of streaming a game? Eurogamer’s report suggests letting users simply download PS1 and PS2 games could put much less stress on their servers than streaming them repeatedly. A PS1 game is usually less than a gigabyte in size, and most PS2 games are only a few gigs. Using PS Now for those games really only makes sense for less powerful devices like the PlayStation TV or Sony Bravia TVs, which can stream games.

And of course, there’s the question of why Sony would let people buy and run old discs instead of buying the games again. Well, for the most, part the market for used PS1 and PS2 games is a tiny one today — that’s not much of a threat to the market for new games. GameStop has already begun to phase out used PS2 games, and they definitely aren’t common anymore outside eBay, Amazon, and the odd retro game store. Even where these places do exist, Sony has already shown the capability to price its digital classics competitively. Final Fantasy VII became one of the top-selling games on PSN despite the PS3 being able to run the original PS1 disc, most likely because those discs can cost as much as $70 these days as opposed to the $10 for the PSN version. For PS2 Classics, Sony has focused specifically on rare games that are expensive at retail, releasing digital versions for a quarter of the price or less. And how many PS4 owners still have a PS1 and PS2 games lying around? Not many, I imagine. It doesn’t make sense to lock out that minority of players who might actually buy a PS4 if they find out they can run their PS2 discs on it.

And even Sony probably knows it can never release every PS2 game ever made that’s worth playing on PSN. There are simply too many, and that’s not even taking licensing restrictions into account. For many of those games the original physical copies will probably remain the only legally available versions for the foreseeable future.

Sony had basically nothing to fear from people being able to run PS1 discs on the PS3, and has little to fear from people running PS1 and PS2 discs on the PS4. At the same time, I think Sony can only really gain from making the PS4 compatible with possibly the most valuable library of any game console ever. The only reason I could see for Sony not allowing PS2 discs (assuming any of Eurogamer’s report is true) is if its PS2 emulation is still too imperfect.

http://www.gamersoutpost.net/